I. SAINT ANSELM (1034-1109, Archbishop of Canterbury and Father of the Church).

The Devotions of Saint Anselm Archbishop of Canterbury.

Edited by Clement C.J. Webb, Fellow of St. Mary Magdalen College Oxford (facsimile reprint of the 1903 London edition). 187 pages. $25.



This volume contains Anselm's Proslogion (or "Address to God concerning His Existence") as well as his meditations, prayers, and a selection of his letters of spiritual direction, all edited, translated, and introduced by Clement C.J. Webb, Oriel Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion at Oxford.

"...Look upon God appearing in the form of a man, and beholding Him acknowledge Him, and acknowledging Him love Him, and loving Him do thine utmost with all thy might to come unto His glory. He was made flesh that He might call thee back to the things of the spirit. He was made a partaker of thy changeableness that He might make thee a partaker of His unchangeableness. He condescended to thy lowliness that He might exalt thee unto His high loftiness. He was born of a pure virgin that He might heal the corruption of thy sinful nature."

St. Anselm from his Devotions

II. SAINT BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX (1090-1153, Father of the Church).

Sermons of St. Bernard

ON ADVENT & CHRISTMAS INCLUDING THE FAMOUS TREATISE ON THE INCARNATION CALLED "MISSUS EST." Compiled and translated at St. Mary's Convent, York, from the Edition (1508), in black-letter, of St. Bernard's Sermons and Letters. With Introduction by J.C. Hedley, O.S.B., Bishop of Newport (facsimile reprint of the 1909 New York edition). 189 pages. $30.

An English translation of nineteen of St. Bernard's sermons, all of them related to the mysteries of Advent and Christmas: two on Advent, four on "Praises of the Virgin-Mother," three for the Vigil of Christmas, five for Christmas day, two on the Circumcision and three on the Epiphany.

"The solemnity of our Lord's Nativity is indeed a great and glorious day, but a short one, and a short day calls for a short sermon. No wonder if we make a short speech, since God the Father has made an abbreviated Word-Verbum abbreviatum. Would you know how long and how short is the Word He has made? This Word says, "I fill heaven and earth," yet, now that "the Word is made flesh," He is placed in a narrow manger. The Psalmist exclaimed, "From eternity and to eternity thou art God," yet, behold! He is a Child of a day. And why this? What necessity was there that the Lord of Majesty should so annihilate Himself, should thus humble Himself, thus abbreviate Himself, except to show that we should do in like manner?"

St. Bernard from his sermon
on Our Lord's nativity

III. SAINT BRIDGET OF SWEDEN (1302-1373, wife, mother of eight children, the patron saint of Sweden, foundress of the Bridgettines; her feast is celebrated on October 8th).

Revelations and Prayers, Being the "Sermo Angelicus" or Angelic Discourse concerning the Excellence of the Virgin Mary, revealed to the Saint, with certain prayers.

Translated from the Latin by Dom Ernest Graf, O.S.B., Monk of Buckfast Abbey (facsimile reprint of the 1928 London / New York edition, with a frontispiece portrait). 98 pages. $25.

"The Angelic Discourse," translated into English for the first time, is divided into three "lessons" for each day of the week (for a total of twenty-one readings) and is followed here by four extraordinary prayers composed by St. Bridget.

"Be thou blessed, O my Lady, Virgin Mary, who didst feel the body of thy Son, which was formed of thine own body, live and grow within thy womb, until the time came of his glorious nativity, and before all others didst thou touch him with thy sacred hands, wrap him in swaddling clothes, and according to the saying of the prophet lay him in a manger and feed him with true maternal love and joy."

- St. Bridget of Sweden from her Revelations and Prayers

IV. SAINT EDMUND CAMPION, S.J. (English martyr, 1540-1581).

Ten Reasons proposed to his adversaries for disputation in the name of Faith and presented to the illustrious members of our universities.

(facsimile reprint of the 1914 London / St. Louis edition). 152 pages. $30.

St. Edmund Campion's Decem Rationes, here translated into English by Joseph Rickaby, S.J., and with a 30-page introduction by John Hungerford Pollen, S.J., is the great apologetic text in which Campion openly challenged Protestant divines in Cambridge and Oxford to dispute with him the ground of Catholicism. Seized by the English authorities almost immediately after the book's publication, Campion was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn on December 1, 1581. This edition of Ten Reasons reprints the original Latin together with Rickaby's English translation.

"...in the Scriptures, as well of Prophets as of Apostles, everywhere there is made honourable mention of the Church: that it is called the holy city, the fruitful vine, the high mountain, the straight way, the only dove, the kingdom of heaven, the spouse and body of Christ, the ground of truth, the multitude to whom the Spirit has been promised and into whom He breathes all truths that make for salvation; her on whom, taken as a whole, the devil's jaws are never to inflict a deadly bite."

-Edmund Campion from Ten Reasons

V. WALTER HILTON (died at Thurgarton Priory, Nottinghamshire, England, in 1395; one of the greatest medieval spiritual writers).

The Scale of Perfection.

Newly edited from MS. Sources. With an Introduction by Evelyn Underhill (facsimile reprint of the 1923 London edition). 533 pages. $40.

The Scale of Perfection is universally regarded as the most complete, lucid, and balanced treatise on the interior life that the late Middle Ages produced. The heart of Hilton's teaching is that the answer to the spiritual difficulties that times of change and violent unrest throw up is to adapt the Church's spiritual teaching to the life of the Christian in the world. He is perhaps the first person in the whole tradition of medieval western spirituality to see that the perfection of the Christian life is not to be restricted to any particular time or place or circumstance, but must always be firmly linked to the fullness of charity.

"Ask thou then of God nothing but this gift of love, that is, the Holy Ghost. For among all the gifts that our Lord giveth is there none so good nor so profitable, so worthy nor so excellent, as this is. For there is no gift of God that is both the giver and the gift, but this gift of love; and therefore it is the best and the worthiest. The gift of prophecy, the gift of miracles-working, the gift of great knowing and counseling, and the gift of great fasting or of great penance-doing, or any other such, are great gifts of the Holy Ghost; but they are not the Holy Ghost, for a reproved and a damnable might have all those gifts as well as a chosen soul... But this gift of love is the Holy Ghost, God Himself; and Him may no soul have and be damned withal, for that gift only saveth it from damnation, and maketh it God's son, perceiver of heavenly heritage."

-Walter Hilton from The Scale of Perfection

VI. HUGH OF ST. VICTOR (philosopher, theologian, and mystical writer, died in Paris, 1141).

Explanation of the Rule of St. Augustine.

Translated by Dom Aloysius Smith, C.R.L. (facsimile reprint of the 1911 London/ Edinburgh edition). 135 pages. $25.

Known in the Middle Ages as a "Second Augustine", Hugh of St. Victor, a Canon Regular of St. Augustine, remains one of the truly great interpreters of the Augustinian spiritual tradition. Here The Rule of St. Augustine is printed in full, with Hugh's line-by-line commentary.

"The kingdom of God is not promised to the slothful, the tepid, or the careless, but, as Holy Scripture says, it 'suffereth violence, and only the violent bear it away' (Matt. xi. 12). God takes delight in the constancy and importunity of our petitions because if His benefits are great, our desires of them must not be small. There must be a proportion between the immensity of the rewards and our yearning after them."

- Hugh of St. Victor from his
Explanation of the Rule of St. Augustine.

VII. RAMON LULL (mystic, missionary, Catalan poet and prose writer, died in Tunis, North Africa, in 1316).

The Art of Contemplation.

Translated from the Catalan with an Introductory Essay by E. Allison Peers (Facsimile reprint of the 1925 London edition). 124 pages. $25.

The Art of Contemplation, the work of an early Franciscan martyr, Ramón Lull, who was known to his own thirteenth century, as well as to later ages, as "the Apostle of Africa", is one of the great classics of Christian mysticism. Its aim is not so much to move the heart to contrition and the eyes to tears as to teach men to love, to teach men to pray. Known as the "Doctor Illuminatus", Ramón Lull's feast day is celebrated on July 3rd.

"To love, remember and comprehend God above all beside, and one's neighbour as oneself, are two commandments which are the beginnings of the others. He who in these two commandments is obedient, obeys God in all the rest; and he who in any of the others is disobedient to God disobeys Him in the first two commandments; and he who loves himself and his neighbour equally with God is disobedient to the first commandment and to all the rest."

-Ramón Lull from The Art of Contemplation

VIII. WILLIAM ROPER (1496-1578, the son-in-law of Thomas More, married in 1525 to More's eldest daughter, Margaret).

The Mirrour of Vertue in Worldly Greatnes or The Life of Sir Thomas More Knight

(facsimile reprint of the 1909 London edition, with Holbein's 1527 portrait of More as frontispiece). 207 pages. $30.

This is the earliest biography of St. Thomas More, printed here in a slightly modernized text, with a few minor changes, principally in punctuation (pages 1-102), and supplemented by the "Letters of Sir Thomas More to and from Margaret Roper" (pages 103-177) followed by notes and an index.

"Our Lord bless you, good daughter, and your good husband, and your little boy, and all yours, and all my children, and all my god-children and all our friends...For it is Saint Thomas' Eve, and the Utas of Saint Peter: and therefore tomorrow long I to go to God: it were a day very meet and convenient for me. I never liked your manner toward me better than when you kissed me last: for I love when daughterly love and dear charity hath no leisure to look to worldly courtesy. Farewell, my dear child, and pray for me, and I shall for you and all your friends, that we may merrily meet in heaven."

-St. Thomas More to his daughter, Margaret Roper, on the eve of his execution

IX. THE PASSION OF SS. PERPETUA AND FELICITY MM. A New Edition and Translation of the Latin text together with the Sermons of S. Augustine upon these saints. Now first translated into English by W.H. Shewring (facsimile reprint of the London 1931 edition). 91 pages. $25.

This is a bilingual Latin-English edition of one of the earliest surviving Christian martyrologies, printed here with a splendid introduction by Walter Shewring and an English translation of four sermons of St. Augustine on Saints Perpetua and Felicity, martyred in Carthage on March 7, 203 (observed today as their feast day).

"To-day with its anniversary and return calleth into our mind, and in a manner setteth anew before us, that day whereon the blessed servants of God, Perpetua and Felicity, being adorned with the crowns of martyrdom, did achieve the flower of perpetual felicity...Wherefore, as now we do, let us keep their solemnities with all devotion, with a sober joyfulness, with a holy assembly, with a faithful memory, with believing praises. It is no small part of imitation to rejoice in the virtues of them that are better than we. They are great and we little, but the Lord hath blessed the little together with the great. They have gone before us, they have shone out before us. If we may not follow them in deeds, let us follow them in affection; if not in glory, at least in gladness; if not in merits, in prayers; if not in their passion, in our compassion; if not in eminence, in communion."

-St. Augustine from his first sermon upon the feast of Ss. Perpetua and Felicity